Tag Archives: Dogs

My second post, on my second Pomeranian puppy.

To back up; I have had a Pom for about fifteen years. She has been a great companion and is trained to my rules, quirks, and hand signals. Her nose has turned from black to grey, her tail often hangs down instead of resting over her hips, and I have to rub her shoulders in the mornings so she doesn’t limp.

I decided to buy a Pom puppy so the training and personality could be passed on. The new puppy, Zenzi, is now nine months old, and has mastered most of Koko’s training. My timing was perfect. I have noticed that Koko would often sit in the floor and stare at me. She watched my face, what I was doing, and my hand gestures. After a few tests, I discovered that Koko is losing her hearing. When Zenzi barks at the door, Koko chimes in with her and doesn’t really know why. Zenzi quits barking when I address the problem, but Koko continues until she makes optical recognition with me.

On the good side, having Zenzi in the house, has encouraged Koko to become more active. She runs and plays now, almost as active as Zenzi. When she becomes tired, she goes to a large piece of pottery, (the toybox), picks out something she thinks I will like, and brings it to me. It’s payment for what we call a butt-lift. I pick her up and she lays against my leg on the couch.

The latest challenge, is a very large red-tailed-hawk. I saw it swoop across Zenzi’s six-pound body and land on a branch, ten feet in front of her. I ran toward it, and threw a piece of wood at it. It just sat and looked at me and then at Zenzi. I grabbed the garden hose and blasted the bird with water. Each time it comes back I squirt it again. Birds don’t fly well with wet feathers. I bought the big plastic owls with the rotating heads, the mylar holographic tape, fishing line, and old CD’s that rotate and reflect the sun. The birds here are just too smart.

My neighbor informed me that the mother had a young one in a nest in their yard, and sure enough, she was teaching the baby how to hunt Pomeranians. They were both in my yard. They both got a shower. I was told that hawks return to the same place to nest each year, and we DO have many other large predatory birds here in Florida, so I went to level two. I am enclosing a large area outside of my sliding glass doors with insulated roof and screened in sides. I will leave the grass and small plants so the dogs can exit the doggy door while I work, and still have grass in a safe environment. Zenzi could live fifteen, or eighteen years. The expense doesn’t hurt so bad if I spread it over the years.

I have been working on, what I call, Trust Exercises. It involves letting her go with me outside of the fenced in yard, and stay with me. I am on a slow road that is lightly traveled and try to do this when everyone is home. She was doing so good that we went farther, around to the other side of the house. Today, I was working in the back yard and left the back garage door open. The overhead was open too, so Zenzi stealthily went through and across my neighbor’s lawn. As I worked in the back yard, I heard a small dog barking. No… Zenzi’s in the house. I saw her run into another fenced in back yard with a woman from the third house trying to catch her and rescue her. Zenzi was scared and had run into a fenced in corner. I started yelling for her, stooped down, and she ran, jumped in the air, and I caught her airborne. Many hours later, we did Trust, again. This time she was never more then ten from me at any time.

As many of you know, I bought a Pomeranian puppy. I have had a Pom for the last fifteen years, but she is getting old and I wanted her to pass on all of the behavior, tricks, and commands, that I have taught her in the past. She welcomed the puppy, to my surprise. Her mother instincts appeared and she is teaching the puppy without my intervention. There are a lot of puppy things, that I had forgotten.

…..

Zenzi stood at the glass door and barked at the back yard. I walked over behind her and looked for an invader into her space. I saw no problem. Usually, I keep a piece of wood in the track of the sliding door for a little extra protection. It was lying on the tile, and not where it belonged. I placed it back on the tracks, and she walked away. Problem solved.

I have a grove of banana trees behind the shed. Zenzi learned that if she pulls the soft skin loose at the bottom of the plant, she can pull it lose all the way to the top. “What fun!”

My house has ceramic tile floors with Persian rugs scattered throughout. My coffee table is an old steam-trunk with a thick glass top. Normally, the top is cleared, displaying money from all of travels beneath. Now, everything in the living room is covered with puppy toys and things she brings in from the back yard. She is still cutting teeth, so I find sticks, leaves, parts of my aloe plants, and the remains of a tomato stake. Amazing… it’s a small doggie door. I also discovered a pair of my socks outside? Trying to tie your shoes is a game to her. Not good when I am running late for work.

…..

Yesterday I sat in my living room, watching the TV. From where I sit, I can also see out of the sliding glass door and most of my back yard. There is a doggy door, so they can come and go as they please and the yard is fenced in.

Suddenly, I saw Zenzi run from behind my shed like a scared rabbit. She stopped, stumbled as she looked behind the shed, and continued running toward the house. I assumed that she had met our neighborhood black-snake, or maybe a hawk that sometimes raids the mocking birds.

I jumped up, opened the door, and went toward the streak of a puppy. She went airborne and I caught her above my knees. She buried her face in my shirt and I held her tightly for assurance. I walked slowly toward the shed, carrying Zenzi, not knowing what to expect. When we got behind the shed, she started trembling and barking in her ferocious puppy bark. I didn’t see the threat. I watched her and followed her line of sight.

In the corner of the fence, was a plastic bag. It was open, full of air, and had blown over the fence and slowly drifted across the lawn. With her in my left arm, I reached down and grabbed the bag as she trembled. I crushed it to the size of an orange as we walked back to the house. Now I am her hero for killing the fierce shopping bag.

In the end, she’s a great little puppy, now just barely over two pounds. She has shown me a side of KoKo, my big Pom, that I had never seen before. When I call a command… like come, sometimes… most of the time… she just sits and looks at me. Koko looks up at me like… “You need some help?” I tell her to teach her and she goes to Zenzi, bumps against her, and walks back to me. Zenzi usually follows. I give rewards for the student and the helper.

What about Jenny?

It was dark and cold. The wind howled through the trees as the fabric of the tent fluttered and popped. I was alone and knew that Jenny was also alone in her tent not 100 feet away. I couldn’t sleep. Too much danger. Too much… alone.

I slid back into my sleeping bag and felt my body heat start to generate warmth against the loosely quilted goose down. I was glad now that I had brought the roll of foil bubble wrap and flattened it under the sleeping bag. I relaxed onto my side with my back toward the nylon.

I felt something pushing against my shoulder. It bumped against me over and over. I slowly pulled my hand from the sleeping bag and pushed against the nylon tent.

IT PUSHED BACK… AGAINST MY HAND! SHIT! I jumped back and watched it push into the side of the tent. I hit it with the open palm of my hand. I heard scuffling outside… and then just the sound of the fluttering tent.

I pulled the sleeping bag up to my neck. The warmth felt good, in fact, there was sweat on my forehead. I dared not close my eyes as I continued staring at the side of the tent for the next attack. A bear? Yes a bear. They have been seen in these mountains. What of Jenny? The bear could have taken her? With the sounds of the tent and the wind, I may not have even heard her scream?

I crawled from the sleeping bag, toward the zippered door. A sudden strong gust blew the side of the tent against me. I pushed my hands against the side to keep it from tearing the stakes from the ground.

IT PUSHED AGAINST MY HAND! I pounded against it with my fist! IT PUSHED BACK OVER AND OVER! As I changed hands it bumped the other. Once I hit its teeth with my knuckle. Then it went away.

I sat and waited listening for sounds of movement outside. Only the wind… and the fluttering of the tent. I was shaking, partially from the freezing cold… and maybe the thought of becoming a bears snack. I slowly reached across and found the tab of the door zipper in the darkness. I had to know what was out there, and if Jenny’s tent was still standing. I slowly slid it up about six inches. . ZZZzzzzzzzzzzzz!

A black nose and white teeth squeezed through the tiny opening.

“AAAAaahhh!” I jumped against the back of the tent almost taking it down. The head raised quickly as the zipper continued to open. A large German Shepherd lept across the tent and laid on my sleeping bag. It wagged its tail as if asking to stay. After I caught my breath, I pulled the zipper back down, and focused the battery lamp on the dog. It laid its head down and looked up at me as if showing submission.

“You’ll have to sleep at the bottom! Move over!” I climbed back into the sleeping bag and rested my hand on the big dog. At various times through the night, she licked my hand.

In the morning I made instant oats on my small alcohol burner, and shared dried beef with the dog in the warmth of the tent. I packed everything into my back pack and went outside to drop the tent. It had snowed last night after I went to sleep, and the mountain was silent in an odd sort of way. As I walked down the mountain the dog stayed right behind me. The only sounds were the crunching of the snow, an occasional snap of a stick, and the heavy breathing of the dog.

We got down the mountain to where we were seeing green again and the snow had turned to mud and weeds. We stopped to rest on a fallen tree, and again shared my dried beef. She watched my facial expressions as she wagged her tail.

But what about Jenny?

I had this dream and went quickly to my keyboard before I forgot it. It was three-o-clock in the morning. The majority of my published and future books start as a dream.

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The KoKo Plant

A Pomeranian with roots.

I was walking through the woods and noticed a dog ahead of me sitting on the ground.
It was KoKo! She looked hurt. I walked over to her to find that she was buried from the shoulders down in the ground. Something didn’t look right. Her eyes were seeing me but not moving and focusing as fast as they normally did.
“How did you get buried in the dirt”? I said to her. She turned her head away from me as I rubbed her ears.
“Something is weird here.” I was starting to get concerned and reached down to the side of her head and raised her lip. She had her normal white teeth. Her eyes slowly moved down to see what I was doing. The ground around her had not been disturbed, and leaves had drifted against her body. I started poking around in the dirt to see how deeply she was buried. “What the Hell!” I started digging with both hands trying to find her legs as she watched me in silence. After getting a ditch dug all around her I realized there was no biological body below the dirt.
“What has happened to you girl?” I grabbed her shoulders and gently lifted her out of the ground.“ROOTS! She has roots!” I said in confusion
She continued watching me and acted as if she felt no pain.
I wrapped moist dirt and leaves around her roots, gently held it all together in my arms, and slowly walked back to the house. When she saw the house come into view she tilted her head back and licked my face. I found a towel, wrapped the roots, and set her in the kitchen sink while I hunted for the right sized flower pot.
“That one’s nice. It is not to heavy and has handles on two sides” I planted her in it with some premium potting soil, and set her by the patio door. I heard a tiny growl.
“Oh yeah girl! There are your squirrels!”
“Woof… Woof!”
Later on that evening I moved her over by the couch while we were watching TV.
“Here’s a potato chip KoKo.” Crunch, Crunch, Crunch.
I poured my melted ice into her pot.
“Bedtime!” I said as usual.
I saw her ears tweak up, so I picked her pot up and set it in the middle of the bed and went to sleep.